Any harried Hiring Manager or HR/TA professional – and who isn’t feeling overwhelmed these days? – can tell you that using a staffing partner for payrolling can save time and strengthen results when it comes to relieving your organization of the administrative burden while providing a positive onboarding experience for consultants. Having a strong partnership with the right staffing partner can bring advantages beyond sourcing, recruiting, placing and retaining top talent.
What is Payrolling?
For purposes of this blog, we are simply defining payroling as it relates to contingent staffing - where the staffing partner provides the administrative functions related to the onboarding, payroll, tax, and benefits administration of a consultant who was recruited and hired by the client. In addition, the staffing partner serving as the employer to the consultant mitigates co-employment risks.
Leveraging an existing partnership with a staffing partner for payrolling services provides a more positive experience to the consultant, as typical payroll firms don’t carry the same level of knowledge about your organization, or relationships.This unique arrangement protects your company and, even better, provides the highest level of flexibility and comfort that comes only from working with a firm already familiar with your tools and processes.
Workers benefit, too
Contingent workers don’t have to keep switching employers, filling out more forms and getting used to new ways of doing things every time they take on a new project. Someone who has retired may want to keep working but not establish a formal consulting business or deal with the myriad issues associated with managing cash flow, time tracking, insurance, and so on.
Working under the Power-4 umbrella relieves them of that administrative work and also connects them with future consulting opportunities. Plus, they automatically receive or have access to:
- Faster, regular paychecks
- General/professional liability insurance
- Medical, dental and vision insurance
- Short-term/long-term disability insurance
- 401(k)
This can be a huge benefit for consultants as well as for companies that are not set up to work with hourly employees or which cannot afford to provide benefits like these to non-FTEs.
Real help for real-life scenarios
- What if your plan is to bring on a new FTE but the budget for that isn’t approved until the next quarter? You already know who you want to hire, and you’re worried (with good reason) that the delay would risk losing the hire. Besides, you need that person now! With Power-4 as your staffing partner, you can secure that hot candidate on an interim basis for a few months as a Power-4 employee.
- It’s usually easier to get approval for contingent labor than FTEs, so you can solve your problem in the short term while you’re waiting, then when the budget is approved or the position opens, you can change the status of your new person. Side benefit: they will be even more valuable for you at that point, since they will now be familiar with their colleagues and the internal workings of your firm.
- What if you want to bring back someone who is retired? Knowledgeable individuals who still want to work can be life-savers to handle specific projects. Onboarding them as Power-4 payroll employees can be a lot faster and more efficient.
- And what about interns? Graduating seniors recruited by your company can utilize Power-4 payrolling services to be their employer of record for the duration of their internship. If they work out, they may continue as contingent workers at the end of the internship period. If you decide to convert them to FTE in the future, we can make that transition easy, too.
- Along similar lines, what if your internal Talent Acquisition team has done the legwork to recruit a promising student but the person only wants to be a consultant? You may bring them on as a consultant with Power-4. This can benefit the student as well – as we get to know them and their project with you comes to an end, they may want to work with one of our other clients.
Power-4 makes it personal
Because we regularly work with high-end consultants, we understand how important it is to provide the kind of outstanding onboarding experience they expect. We can provide personalized onboarding on behalf of clients because we are familiar with their company, thanks to our experience recruiting and placing FTE candidates for them. Since consultants we place remain under the Power-4 umbrella, they always have a real person here they can turn to whenever they have questions, need help with payroll, want to make changes, etc.
Using a staffing partner you know and trust delivers a better experience for everyone. And that reflects better on your company.